PC with Actinic and coral?

[finfighter]

I found out it is ALOT cheaper to get a PC with actinic and moon lights then to get an MH. I was wondering what a 4x65w PC with 2 seperate actinic lights on it could support as far as coral goes. Also if it cant support anything good another cheap idea for coral growth.

 

[annanymous]

what size your tank is? just get the total wattage and divide by the amount of Gal in your tank. if less then 5-7 go only with soft corals, zoos, and shrooms. if more then you open a whole new world of possibilities. you might even sucseed with SPS, but you need a mature tank for that.

 

[finfighter]

im getting a 55 but i have no idea how much the actinic lights wattages are ill use them as 65 watts like the other lights in the equation i guess
its just a little bit over 7 like 7.1 or sumthin so id just play is safe with soft corals. could i keep anenomes though?

 

[ivanfj]

The watts per gal rule doesn't say alot IMO. i.e. 7-8 wpg of normal output lighting isn't stronger than 5-6 wpg of power compact. IMO low lighting means NO lighting; moderate would be PC/VHO/T5 HO; high/strong light would be MH. In your case, if you go with 4 stripes of PC, you should be able to keep quite a lot of corals with a few exceptions. My suggestions would be bubble coral, candycane, and some euphillia (frogspawn, torch, hammer). If you wanna house an anemone with PC lighting, you may have to gamble with a bubbletip anemone.